QPR's £45k-a-week signing was one that will not be remembered fondly: View | OneFootball

In the last 20 years, Queens Park Rangers have spent three seasons in the English Premier League.

The three campaigns were very tough for the West London side, with only one of them seeing them beat the drop to the Championship.

That was the 2011/12 season, where the Hoops made many changes to their squad throughout their campaign, something that has punished them in recent years.

One player who arrived in that season was midfielder Samba Diakite; he may have been forgotten by some of the club’s supporters, as while he may have done alright when he first joined the club, he soon turned out to be another player with big wages who didn’t have the quality to succeed.

As mentioned, the 2011/12 season was Queens Park Rangers’ first season back in the top flight for a long time.

The club was keen to make sure they stayed there, so it was a very hands-on approach when it came to making new additions.

The Rs signed players such as Bobby Zamora, Djibril Cisse, Shaun Wright-Phillips, DJ Campbell, and Samba Diakite.

They were all signings that either cost the club a lot of money in terms of transfer fees or, in the case of Diakite, he joined the club first on loan and arrived on a £45,000 a week wage.

The midfielder joined the club from French side AS Nancy, and he spent the rest of that campaign at the club on loan before joining on a permanent basis in the following summer once their safety had been confirmed.

Samba Diakite arrived at the club in the 2012 January transfer window, unknown to English football, as he spent all of his career in France.

So, his arrival didn’t see fans go overboard, but that didn’t stop Diakite from doing his best to help the side.

The midfielder played nine times from joining the club until the end of that Premier League season, scoring one goal in the process.

In those six months, the Mali international played 675 minutes of football in the Premier League, and given that he played his part in the club staying in the league, QPR decided to sign the midfielder on a permanent basis.

The Rs signed Diakite that summer, and he signed a four-year contract. Many would have hoped he could kick his career on with the club.

However, it didn’t get much better for Diakite, as he played 14 times the following season but didn’t really do much to warrant praise and was obviously part of a side that was relegated back to the Championship.

That relegation kind of put an end to Diakite’s time with the Hoops, as he didn’t play for QPR in the 2013/14 season, joining Watford on loan for the final six months.

But the Mali international didn’t do much better with the Hornets, and he returned to Loftus Road with his future at the club up in the air. The Rs decided to ship him out on loan once again, this time to Al-Ittihad in Saudi Arabia, but he returned to the club six months later.

Diakite spent the 2015/16 season watching the Rs, as he didn’t appear for the club, and once his contract came to an end that season, he was allowed to leave on a free transfer.

So, like many of QPR’s signings around that time, Diakite joined the club for a hefty transfer fee and big wages, but didn’t do anything for the club to warrant why they bought him in the first place.

The midfielder helped the club stay in the Premier League when he first joined, but it didn’t get much better, and in the end, he will be a signing that will likely be forgotten by the QPR fans.